


Toska

by freedomheart



Category: Leverage
Genre: Character Study, some random ramblings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-09
Updated: 2019-07-09
Packaged: 2020-06-25 01:27:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19735585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/freedomheart/pseuds/freedomheart
Summary: Toska: (Russian) dull ache of the soul, a longing with nothing to long for, a sick pining, a vague restlessness, mental throes, yearning.Eliot was never satisfied.A breif character study of Eliot Spencer and why he is who he is





	Toska

Toska: (Russian) dull ache of the soul, a longing with nothing to long for, a sick pining, a vague restlessness, mental throes, yearning.

Eliot was never satisfied.

Not with the hole in the wall hardware shop with nails and paint and bolts and screws stacked up to the ceiling in frustratingly neat piles, not with his father with his 6:47 coffee and 7:42 flip of the sign from opened to closed or his sister who dated the same asshole for 4 years but never smiled more than a carefully constructed facade as fake as the plastic daisies on the counter of the shop nestled between business cards and a stack of pocket sized flashlights. 

He always wanted something more, something different. There was something there, something always out of reach, something untouchable, like grabbing rainbows through the pool water.

When he was 5 and his mother died, there was an ache for her. His father expected screaming and fits but he never did. It ached, burned a little, but it was never screeching.

His father felt differently, it was a vicious toss into strict schedules and peering eyes at every corner. Eliot couldn't walk a step without caution and criticism. His entire life became filled with fear from his father, fear of walking outside and fear of stepping out of line, hand sanitizer lathered his hands at all times pumped every time he walked by his father. 

School every morning was dull, after school was homework and criticism on how he stacked the 2x4s and then dinner with his sister while his father worked his second job at the bar downtown.

When he was 9 he got tired of being afraid of anything, because being afraid was weak and if he was going to be a cop he couldn't be afraid of anything. So he locked himself in the back shed for 3 days with a bucket and 4 lunchables he saved from supper. His sister tried to make him leave but left after he refused for 3 straight hours.

School was good by middle school, but it was still boring. There was something more outside a tiny town with only one movie theater and a lake for entertainment. It was a sick twisted pining, and there was no comfort in stacking buckets of screws but there was comfort in running and being breathless and being hopeful.

Eliot began to understand, he got into football and had his group of friends. Life felt a little more full, especially when he walked into the home ec classroom. It was a way to get chicks, yeah he would be the first to admit it, but he began to feel fullness in creation.

It was the last day of his sophomore year when he saw the bruises. He smelled the alcohol on his sisters boyfriend's breath and he got angry. Everything had always been so level, everything spiked and he wanted to hurt him, more than he had ever wanted anything in his life.

His fists balled in pure rage and he stepped in front of his sister, every ounce of his heart burned with passion he'd never felt before.

A vague restlessness turned to something much more powerful, something bitter and angry and passionate. No one should ever be hurt, no one should ever be helpless.

So he wanted to be a soldier, to leave a tiny town and to help people. He had God in his heart and passion and a moral compass more steady than that schedule he had hated so much as a child.

And a military schedule felt so much more right, so much more good. A schedule not for the sake of schedule and a false sense of selfish control but a schedule for progress, that cut that pining, that restlessness. Gave him a purpose, something to love and something to believe in. Something to fight for, to fight for all the sisters out there who were hit and his brothers who were brave and didn't just yearn for change but who fought for it.

How he got into another line of business was a long story, a convoluted and angry story and he didn't feel good anymore. He wasn't fighting for anything but his own selfish survival, and that sick feeling filled his life again.

Along the way he learned Russian, and Hebrew,and Arabic. He learned words that had meanings more complicated than he had ever imagined. Words that couldn't be described but had to be felt. Like that loneliness, that vague feeling of restlessness, no matter the places he'd been, there was something missing.

So he learned to cook and he grew his food and named his cactus Christian and did everything he could to try to keep his feet on the ground but nothing felt like enough.

And then he worked that job and things kept happening and happening.

Toska, a pining, a yearning, a restlessness. He knew what he had lost the first time he put a bullet in an innocent man. He had lost his purpose, he lost why he was there, to protect the sisters who got hit by drunk assholes.

He found a family again, with a lost father and a mysterious actress, with an insane thief and a unfocused hacker.A motley crew, an odd mix of people who brought his feet to the ground in the way no cactus could do.

Toska, a common enough feeling, and one that could be helped by helping. Teaching the crazy thief how to understand feelings and a hacker taught him how to use the internet.

Life is give and take, Toska: a yearning, a sick pining.

He could still feel it sometimes, a restlessness, but there was acceptance in settling and bringing down the bad guys with him.

**Author's Note:**

> Enjoy! Just a little character study I thought up


End file.
